Archive for January, 2010

When you make a mistake, big or small, cherish it like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Because in some ways, it is.

Most of us feel bad when we make mistakes, beat ourselves up about it, feel like failures, get mad at ourselves.

And that’s only natural: most of us have been taught from a young age that mistakes are bad, that we should try to avoid mistakes. We’ve been scolded when we make mistakes — at home, school and work. Maybe not always, but probably enough times to make feeling bad about mistakes an unconscious reaction.

Yet without mistakes, we could not learn or grow.

If you think about it that way, mistakes should be cherished and celebrated for being one of the most amazing things in the world: they make learning possible, they make growth and improvement possible.

By trial and error — trying things, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes — we have figured out how to make electric light, to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to fly.

Mistakes make walking possible for the smallest toddler, make speech possible, make works of genius possible.

Think about how we learn: we don’t just consume information about something and instantly know it or know how to do it. You don’t just read about painting, or writing, or computer programming, or baking, or playing the piano, and know how to do them right away.

Instead, you get information about something, from reading or from another person or from observing usually … then you construct a model in your mind … then you test it out by trying it in the real world … then you make mistakes … then you revise the model based on the results of your real-world experimentation … and repeat, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, until you’ve pretty much learned how to do something.

That’s how we learn as babies and toddlers, and how we learn as adults. Trial and error, learning something new from each error.

Mistakes are how we learn to do something new — because if you succeed at something, it’s probably something you already knew how to do. You haven’t really grown much from that success — at most it’s the last step on your journey, not the whole journey. Most of the journey was made up of mistakes, if it’s a good journey.

So if you value learning, if you value growing and improving, then you should value mistakes. They are amazing things that make a world of brilliance possible.

Let’s say you have a product, widget or doo dad and let’s say your product sells for $100, and your cost of goods are $50 per unit, for a gross profit of $50. Let’s say further that your overhead is $5,000 per month. If you sell 100 units you’ll break even, right? Now imagine you cut your price 20%, from $100 to $80 via a coupon of sorts, leaving you with $30 of gross margin. You need to sell 66% more units just to break even. Let’s look at what happens when you raise your prices. Through good product positioning and excellent marketing you raise the price tag 20% to $120, your margins increase to $70, and now your breakeven drops to 71 units, and you make $2000

IF

you sell the same number of them. But that’s a big if.

In general say you have a office, some staff, and a physical product – in other words, fixed overhead – lower prices can kill you – and you won’t even see it coming. Raising your prices can make you money! This only works, of course, when you can also increase your value proposition..

With all the talk recently about energy savings and tax credits, I thought it would be a good idea to provide information on what exactly that is. As technicians it’s easy to tell people, “Buy a High Efficiency furnace, get $1500.” But do we know why or how that exactly works. Is EVERYBODY eligible for the tax credit? Rather than type everything in the blog I’ve include the link to the EPA’s website here. The page will open in a new window so you won’t lose your place here. I urge you guys that don’t know, take the time to read a little about what you’ve already been preaching about to people. As this is the 1st post under this new category, look for more quality news, information and other HVAC related issues. Subscribe via our RSS feed too.

Data entry has to be the most boring, unfulfilling job in the world. I would put a ‘in my opinion’ here, but I’ve always been baffled by that phrase… I’m certainly not stating another persons opinion and before this becomes a rant, since it’s my blog it would most certainly be MY OPINION. Back to the topic at hand. I bring the subject of Data Entry up as i just spent the last 3hrs. of my life entering data into our ON LINE STORE and then into our Calendar. Now i could spend hours upon days rummaging through HTML and PHP code just looking for a script to customize and be alright with that. Or work inside Dreamweavers split view making things happen and be alright with that too. I think it’s because there’s more of a reward as your work unfolds in front of you. As for inputting crummy ole’ data into not one, but TWO separate databases and then creating customized links to join them together to that i say, send me into a dusty crawlspace any day or how about an attic, filled with spray insulation in mid Summer to reach an air-handler that is so far back not only do i have to crawl on my knees on the skinny sides of 2×4’s in the 120 degree swelter, but i need to watch my head from the roofing nails sticking through the sheeting, all while lugging my tools behind me only to get situated and realize my invoice book is slightly out of my reach. So maybe data entry isn’t that bad in retrospect, but it isn’t nice!

Decided to set-up a blog board rather than put inventory in the on-line store. I do not blog by tradition (nor do i design websites), but this might be a fun addition to what we’re trying to accomplish. Also It might be a way to get us noticed on the MIGHTY SEARCH ENGINES!! Either way, let’s see how it works.